and Voltaire is said to have exclaimed, on reading some of them: 'The
eloquence of Greece and Rome is revived in the British Senate.' Johnson,
finding they were so received, felt some prickings of conscience, and
discontinued their manufacture. When upon his deathbed, he said that
'the only part of his writings that gave him any compunction was his
account of the debates in the _Gentleman's Magazine_, but that at the
time he wrote them he did not think he was imposing upon the world.'
Several attempts had been made to checkmate Cave, and in 1747 he was
summoned before the House of Lords, reprimanded, and fined, but finally
discharged upon begging pardon of the House, and promising never to
offend again. However, in 1752, he resumed the publication of the
debates, with this prefatory statement, a statement which must be taken
_cum grano_:

'The following heads of speeches in the H---- of C---- were given
me by a gentleman, who is of opinion that members of Parliament are
accountable to their constituents for what they say as well as what
they do in their legislative capacity; that no honest man, who is
entrusted with the liberties and purses of the people, will ever be
unwilling to have his whole conduct laid before those who so
entrusted him, without disguise; that if every gentleman acted upon
this just, this honorable, this constitutional principle, the
electors themselves only would be to blame if they reflected a
person guilty of a breach of so important a trust.'

Cave continued his reports in a very condensed form until he died, in
1754, and left his system as a legacy to his successors and imitators.
He was the father of parliamentary reporting, and it is for this reason
more especially that his name deserves to be remembered with gratitude
by all well wishers to the freedom of the press, which is the liberty of